Rag traders: online fashion turning heads

By Anthony Caruana on Jul 19, 2012 3:25PM

If you're looking to take your business online, you could do worse than emulate Australians online fashion e-tailers.

Last night the winners of the 2012 Online Retail Industry Awards (ORIA) recognising the Awards recognise excellence in online retail were announced with fashion e-tailer SurfStitch taking out Online Retailer of the Year.

If anything, the winners list is useful for seeing how other local businesses are tackling the task of selling on the Internet. The "Best pure-play online retailer" for example, is chosen based on "efficiency, ingenuity, dedication to customer experience and return on investment." This year it was won by SurfStitch.

Attended by 450 industry leaders and judged by a panel of international and local experts. They were Steven Noble, Forrester Research; Dan Ferguson, VistaPrint; Jake Hird, Econsultancy; Martin Newman, Practicology; Ross McDonald, Google; Laura Yeomans, ShopStyle; Joanna Lord, SEOmoz and Grant Arnott, Power Retail.

SurfStitch picked up a swag with Awards for Best Pureplay Retailer, Best Site Optimisation and Design, and Online Retailer of the Year. Other winners include The Iconic as Best New Online Retailer, Shoes of Prey with the Best Use of Technology Award and brandsExclusive with Best Mobile Commerce Award.

Andrew Jones, Online Retailer Event Manager congratulated the winners.

"The online retail industry in Australia is booming and the 2012 ORIA winners are fantastic examples of how success can be achieved in this industry. Congratulations to all the winners, the judges had a hard time choosing from the high quality of entries received this year" said Mr Jones.

The 2012 Online Retail Industry Award Winners were: